Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that over a hundred (145) candidates for parliament were disqualified from running by the Appellate Board for their alleged ties to Baathism. Over 500 had initially been excluded, out of more than 6000. Of those, many did not appeal or their appeals were hastily put together and failed. There were about 75 reversals early on, and another 26 appeals were accepted this week.

But Salih Mutlak, Sunni, secular head of the National Dialogue Bloc, who had sat in parliament and led a contingent of 11 MPs, is among the more important of the 145 whose appeals were rejected. There are no obvious connections between him and ‘Baathism’ today, unless by that term is just meant anyone with a secular, Arab nationalist outlook.

Mutlak had joined the Iraqi Nationalist Movement Coalition led by former appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi. As a result, the court’s decision gave the appearance of slamming Allawi and his secular, cross-sectarian party list in particular. The so-called Justice and Accountability Committee, which initiated the disqualifications, is the remnant of the ‘debaathification committee’ set up by the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon and their ally Ahmad Chalabi to ensure that Sunni Arab nationalists with sympathies for the Palestinians and a tendency to ally with the greater Sunni Arab world were excluded from office in the new Iraq, in favor of Shiites and Kurds. Chalabi is still around and on the JAC. He has sometimes been accused of being a double agent for Iran and of helping sucker the US into overthrowing Saddam Hussein for Iran’s benefit. That the leadership of the committee that disqualified Mutlak is so obviously fundamentalist Shiites or Shiite politicians close to Iran infuriates Iraq’s Sunni Arabs.

Allawi announced that his Iraqi Nationalist Movement was suspending its campaign for parliament on Sunday, in protest against Mutlak’s exclusion. I suggested a couple of weeks ago that the whole point of the disqualifications may well have been to ensure that Allawi had no opportunity to form a government and return as prime minister (in the Iraqi constitution, the single largest party or coalition gets the first shot at forming a government,and with the Shiites splintered and running against one another in this election, such an opportunity could not be ruled out for Allawi had there been no disqualifications). But it should also be said that voting patterns in recent years did not favor a secular, cross-sectarian coalition, and my own guess is that it would not have done particularly well anyway. But Sunni Arabs, especially the majority who are secular-minded, will feel left out of national politics as a result of these decisions by the Shiite majority. Or perhaps the religious Sunnis will be incensed by this, too– VP Tariq al-Hashimi, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party (the Iraqi version of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood), is also a member of Allawi’s coalition. His fellow IIP party member, Dhafir al-Ani, was among those disqualified (how a Sunni revivalist is a Baathist is hard to fathom).

Allawi’s group is still appealing to the Federal Supreme Court or the Iraqi Parliament to intervene to stop the disqualifications.

The Iraqi Nationalist Movement also issued a press release to its followers in Salahuddin, Diyala and Nasiriya Provinces, saying that the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had launched a wave of arrests of political rivals, especially targeting members of the Iraqiya list, on a scale that threatens the integrity of the elections. They said al-Maliki wants to return Iraq to one-party rule (that of his Islamic Mission Party or the Da’wa).

Their plea that the arbitrary arrests cease and those incarcrated be released echoes the language of the political opposition in Iran (ironically, this borrowing of such language may be deliberate, since Iraqi Nationalist Movement supporters typically despise the theocratic Khamenei regime in Iran).

Sunni Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Iyad al-Samarra’i, admitted that those who had been disqualified had openly criticized paragraph 63 of the Iraqi constitution, which bans Baathists from any public role and makes the party illegal. But he said that members of parliament are granted by the same constitution the right to speak their minds on such issues, and should not be punished, though he disagrees with what they said (apparently, he had better).

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Salih Mutlak is now expressing skepticism that the March 7 parliamentary elections will be aboveboard. He said he is disturbed by the behavior of the parties closely linked to Iran, hinting that he was excluded from running at the behest of Tehran.

The USG Open Source Center summarizes: “Al-Sabah carries on page 5 a 200-word report citing Shaykh Abd-al-Mahdi al-Karbala’i, during the Friday Sermon in the Karbala Governorate, as warning against the phenomenon of buying votes of the citizens in the next legislative elections, and affirming that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has called on Muslims to abandon sectarianism.”

Many Iraqis fear that the Shiite National Iraqi Coalition will steal the election by buying votes,and a parliamentary leader of the coalition, Humam al-Hammudi, had to deny (al-Istiqamah, Feb. 11) rumors that party (which includes the pro-Iran Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) is already measuring curtains for the prime minister’s mansion.

Certainly, the chances for another big Shiite victory on March 7 have improved, as the Sunnis and secularists are talking about suspended campaigns and even boycotts.

4 Responses

MonsieurGonzo

StarsAndStripes — In Baghdad's Green Zone, the glimmer is gone: “For many, the Green Zone has come to represent much about what went wrong in Iraq, both before and after the U.S. invasion in 2003. Larded with grandiose monuments to Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government, the area became the heavily barricaded headquarters of U.S. efforts to run Iraq in the years after the invasion. Neither regime was particularly known for its responsiveness to the needs of ordinary Iraqis. Trash and stunted weeds litter the dusty courtyards between buildings. The elevators are often out of order. Piles of small machinery — possibly related to the elevators — lie crumpled in the stairwells. Residents spend most of their time inside, watching television. U.S. troops have increasingly pulled back from most parts of Iraq — including this one. Improved security has seen much of Baghdad return to a bustling, traffic-jammed semblance of normalcy.”

“Control of security in most of the Green Zone was handed over to the Iraqi government at the beginning of 2009, and the U.S. military has consolidated its operations onto a pair of bases near the massive new U.S. Embassy, Fortress America. One is built around a bombed-out Republican Guard palace. The other stretches between the monolithic former Baath Party headquarters and a blue-domed mausoleum for the party’s founder, Michel Aflaq — which has been turned into a mall selling pirated DVDs, jogging suits and miniature carpets emblazoned with the words “Operation Iraqi Freedom” to U.S. soldiers and security guards from Peru and Uganda.”

Anonymous

"Dhafir al-Ani, was among those disqualified (how a Sunni revivalist is a Baathist is hard to fathom)."

You're forgetting that Dhafir has recently come out to publicly praise the Baathists, Saddam Hussein, has called Talabani an "imposter" and has called him president of the kurds and not Iraq. He is known to be a racist.

Anonymous

has called Talabani an "imposter" and has called him president of the kurds and not Iraq

Sounds like quite a good description of Talebani to me: "president of the kurds and not Iraq"

Nostalgia for the times of Saddam is quite common. A bit like nostalgia for communism in Russia. Doesn't make al-Ani a Baathist. Just a recognition of the fact that for many, maybe a majority of, Iraqis, surprising as it may seem, times were actually better under Saddam. Hard to believe, but there's a lot in it.

The anon commenter is evidently a Kurdish partisan.

Comments are closed.

Donations

Thank you to all of my supporters for your generosity and your encouragement of an independent press! Checks to